Study: Marriage does not improve children’s development

Study after study has shown that children with married parents are better off, and our society has embraced the idea that children should be raised by married adults. The latest research digs deep into this long-held belief and reveals an interesting twist.

A new British study finds that kids of married parents are more intellectually advanced than those born out of wedlock, but this has nothing to do with marriage. Rather it’s a reflection of the types of people who tend to get married and those who don’t, the London Guardian reports. Married people are usually well-educated, while cohabitating couples often haven’t graduated from college.

In other words, you don’t have to be married to raise a successful kid. You just need to be educated.

Researchers conducted the study by taking a close look at the Millennium Cohort Study, “a sample of children born in the UK in the early 2000s.” While the study was done in the U.K., it’s still relevant in the United States where “out-of-wedlock birthrates are soaring.” Unmarried mothers give birth to 4 out of every 10 babies, according to the NY Times, and these children often have poorer health and educational outcomes than those kids born to married mothers.

Experts often disagree on whether parents of children born out of wedlock should be encouraged to marry their partners. Marriage can provide financial security, but if the parents are unhappily married, the child can suffer. But maybe this new study shows that experts should be taking a closer look at the parents’ education. Would these parents having kids out of wedlock benefit more from getting an education or tying the knot?